Notices by Brewster Kahle (brewsterkahle@mastodon.archive.org)

we bought a bunch of 'male' guppies, but, uh, now we have tons of baby guppies. Yippie! Happy Sunday.

The Guppy
by Ogden Nash:

Whales have calves,
Cats have kittens,
Bears have cubs,
Bats have bittens,
Swans have cygnets,
Seals have puppies,
But guppies just have little guppies.

https://allpoetry.com/The-Guppy

there are joys to every job.

having this pop up in an @internetarchive slack thread is one for me.

"The Human Library
This Saturday

The Human Library returns to Cincinnati this Saturday, November 8th from 1:00-4:00pm at the Clifton Branch Library (3400 Brookline Ave).

At the Human Library, you'll have the chance to "check out" real people and hear their unique stories through meaningful one-on-one conversations. It's a powerful antidote to the polarization and isolation that's eroding empathy and understanding in our culture.

https://communityhappenshere.org/?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=690d088fc312bd739cfa3000&ss_campaign_name=The+Human+Library+Is+This+Weekend&ss_campaign_sent_date=2025-11-06T21%3A05%3A45Z

1/2

Datacenter cooling uses so much water because it is

"evaporative cooling"-- it is actually boiling water. transition water to steam takes energy-- energy from the machines.

This can use up alot of fresh water (it is), or...

it could desalinate water at a huge scale. boiling seawater allows fresh water to be separated from salt.

so we could have datacenters boil seawater to create fresh water to water plants.

why not? (am I wrong about this?)

1/2

ratio of male to female of domesticated species

0.36%. for chickens

(always wanted to know, and chatGPT makes it so easy!)

Chickens:
The USDA’s 2022 Census (“Poultry & Eggs Highlights”) reported:
Chickens, broilers: ~ 1,737.7 million head.
Chickens, layers: ~ 388.5 million head.
Chickens, roosters: ~ 7.7 million head.

5.4% Cows

Cows (beef + milk cows that have calved): 37.2 million head
Bulls (weighing 500 lbs and over): 2.01 million head

1/2

"An urgent warning about the open web’s shrinking commons"

Vint Cerf,Cindy Cohn,Jon Stokes (ars technica),and me. a take:

"remake the connective tissue—technical, legal, and economic—that made the web an engine for learning and civic life.

Keep the network interoperable.

Safeguard libraries.

Restore competition.

If the open web can still be a place where truth moves farther and faster than lies, the next chapter can still be written with those principles in mind."

https://www.findarticles.com/an-urgent-warning-about-the-open-webs-shrinking-commons/

2/2

"When the sun dips and demand spikes, those batteries push stored solar power back onto the grid, slashing reliance on gas plants and driving fossil gas use for electricity down nearly 40%."

from https://www.transitionfinanceweekly.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Go California Batteries!

"California’s Wraps Another Summer Without a Single Flex Alert

In 2025, renewable energy sources supplied more than 100% of California’s electricity demand on 206 days, according to grid data. The state’s vast installed base of batteries — now totaling more than 52 gigawatt-hours of capacity, triple that of any other U.S. market — is playing a decisive role in keeping the lights on.

1/2

@tomjennings This is fabulous-- gopher lives!

I wish we had a good fidonet archive-- do you have one?

A brilliant video (short) from 2004 predicted the rise of algorithms in creating personalized information ‘bubbles’ in a fictional future system called EPIC that, by 2014, has taken over the media landscape. It is worth quoting at length, and I suggest the 9 minutes: https://archive.org/details/RobinSloanEPIC2014

$20 billion is $155 per US household. (thought it illustrates a number in the news)

"The U.S. just bailed out Argentina, treasury secretary confirms
President Donald Trump acted to help an ally in Latin America even as some MAGA supporters grumbled."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/10/09/argentina-receives-us-bailout/

4,000 tickets a month by one photo robo-cop. (I have not gotten one yet)

36mph drivers in San Francisco now getting automatic tickets one block after exiting freeway on a 4 lane one-way street...

braking to the 25mph posted speed limit-- dangerous?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/speed-camera-san-francisco-21081832.php

(1st timers at 11-16mph over get warning via snail mail, $50 to $500 fines for others, depending on speed. 56 new cameras in SF.)

@ai6yr @blaise @paul_ipv6

I love buying books from Better World Books-- they contribute books to good causes, such as the @internetarchive

Tom Lehrer, Musical Hero gave away his songs before he passed. Even more reasons to love this man.

"All copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished, and therefore such songs are now in the public domain. " https://tomlehrersongs.com/

(and he just passed at 97)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/arts/music/tom-lehrer-dead.html

quick stat for we library nerds:

it takes 1 month to dehydrate books in a cardboard box from 70% relative humidity to 50% with an environment of 35% relative humidity.

next-- time for books in close-packed boxes, and low cost techniques to sustain low hydration.

(low humidity is good for book preservation.)

"In an age of informational chaos, the Wayback Machine feels like one of the few institutions that never lies to us."

Nice comment from Current Affair editor

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-to-keep-the-truth-alive

The Internet Archive now has a Podcast!

About Libraries, Internet, Copyright, AI, and more.

https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/

please give us feedback @internetarchive

Feeling old...

Exhibit of relics at New York Public Library--friend sent me this.

👴

Moment of Gratitude: CloudFlare

CloudFlare saved the Internet Archive servers from DDOS attack yesterday

The max rate of this DDOS attack was 525 Gbps (44.93 Mpps) of a "TCP flood."

The Internet Archive does not have enough bandwidth to fend off that kind of attack.

Thank you #cloudflare or we would have had a very bad Saturday at the @internetarchive

DDOS attacks are coming more frequently.

A power outage shut https://archive.org down, and some equipment did not come back-- argh, sorry.

Replaced and back!